1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to the field of data processing and, more specifically, to the indexing of data.
Portions of the disclosure of this patent document contain material that is subject to copyright protection. The copyright owner has no objection to the facsimile reproduction by anyone of the patent document or the patent disclosure as it appears in the Patent and Trademark Office file or records, but otherwise reserves all copyright rights whatsoever. Sun, Sun Microsystems, the Sun logo, Solaris, "Write Once, Run Anywhere", Java, JavaOS, JavaStation, HotJava Views and all Java-based trademarks and logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. in the United States and other countries.
2. Background Art
Computers have enabled the storage and transmission of large amounts of information. Large numbers of documents, images, multimedia works, and other information are available in an electronically-readable form. However, often only a particular piece of information is needed at a particular time. Finding the desired information among all available information can be a very difficult task.
Fortunately, computers can be programmed to search for the desired information. Computer software designed for searching, also known as "search engines," can help locate the desired information. Because of the large amount of information available, search engines generally do not search through all available information in response to each search query. Rather, search engines generally utilize a database, referred to as an index, that summarizes the content and location of the a large amount of information. An index is a compilation of specific pieces of information, for example words or phrases, each with references to locations within the document or documents that are within the scope of the index at which the specific pieces of information occur.
Nonetheless, often such search engines and indexes require large amounts of memory to store their data and program code. Such large memory requirements prevent the search engines and indexes from being used on smaller computing platforms, for example, handheld computers or appliances enhanced with data processing capability, or from being transmitted easily between computing environments, for example, over an internet connection.